Maverick's World

The Daily Donald 5/19/2017

Over the last few days, we have seen significant amounts of evidence emerge that points to deep misgivings about Donald Trump among leading GOP figures and Trump's own staff. Twitter has filled up with strange non-stop whining by Trump staff in the WH about their imminent demise and the likelihood of massive legal costs in the foreseeable future.

In a strange twist of words, Trump appeared to throw his team under the bus while clearing himself of any involvement with Russia. It is not clear who will believe him now that he has openly admitted to trying to firing D/FBI Comey for not shutting down the TrumpRussia investigation and there is evidence of him trying to coerce D/FBI Comey to divulge sensitive details of the investigation to him over dinner. Based on the above incident alone, I sense that Donald Trump knows it is completely over at this point and he has switched to a strategy that will hopefully keep himself out of jail.

A lot of people find this idea strange. There is a general belief that a sitting president cannot be prosecuted due to the special kind of immunity that he enjoys. I agree that is the way the language of the US Constitution has been interpreted thus far, but the constitution gives no guidance on what to do in a situation where criminals seize control of the presidency to keep a wider criminal conspiracy going.  In such a situation, one may have to fall back on very narrow interpretations of the written words of the constitution. Such narrow interpretations will lead one to conclude that Presidential immunity does not cover acts committed prior to taking the oath of office and that should the sole purpose of such prior acts be to seize control of the office of President, then all acts committed in office be interpreted as being in service of an ongoing conspiracy. This would effectively negate the Presidential immunity all together. Impeachment would not be necessary or relevant.

This may seem like a very radical idea, but I find it expedient from a process perspective. All it requires is a single judge somewhere in the country to offer an opinion as such. Naturally such a decision would require judicial review, and obviously until that is complete all legal action against the criminal would be suspended as would any attempt by the criminal to make any use of the office of President. The review process would need sufficient time to examine all available evidence to support the interpretation of the lower court and the effect of such a decision would be to freeze the current situation. As Donald Trump would be the subject of a judicial process, he would have to channel his communications through a set of lawyers. All his EOs would also be subject to a judicial review process (which ideally they would be anyways if he were to follow the SOPs already established in the WH instead of pulling it our of Bannon/Miller's posteriors).

It would not need many people to get this sort of thing going. A handful of judges and lawyers could take this forward without much effort. It would take a lot of effort to quash this kind of proceeding once it got started. Given the secrecy that typically surrounds judicial processes it may even be possible to get this going in complete secrecy and firewall from any real interaction with the outside world until the decision was made public. I think one may be able to do with a sealed indictment or a even a preliminary hearing. I would however be surprised if it was possible to do this under military laws or under the frameworks created to cope the international terrorism situation after 9/11.

Time Magazine has published details of the data intercepts that were first obtained by USIC on imminent RIS interference in the US election. The article also describes RIS operational techniques involving compromising social media and other information channels. FWIW the article suggests a GRU led team (which I call B-team - A-team being the SVR-Xdir people) were supposed to cause a major fracas and make HRC's life miserable. It was Putin's idea of revenge. One can almost sense that RIS was not prepared for a situation where Trump actually won and is now in improv mode.

Time magazine seems to be essentially correct in reporting that some people were led to believe that this was just the RIS messing around with the US, but I feel we cannot rule out the possibility that the "Putin's Revenge" narrative was just a mask for a much more ambitious RIS operation to cope with economic collapse that Russia finds itself in.

I have stated multiple times that it is foolish to think of the RIS as a bunch of old vodka swilling men incapable of pulling of a Kholstomer style operation. While I agree with what Time is reporting at a factual level, I am not inclined to see this simply as "Putin's Revenge", I think this may be a much bigger operation than people are willing to admit at this time.

posted by maverick @ 5:38 AM